Calia inspected the young woman laying on the bed. The woman’s breathing was calm, but using her gift, Calia could feel weakness in the woman’s heartbeats. The young woman’s stomach was swollen and Calia could feel the faintest little beats from within. Two tiny beats, so weak they were barely noticeable, feeling like a matchstick trying to glow inside of a whirlwind. If nothing changed, the babies would be dead within the week, if not sooner.
It was sad, but there was nothing to be done. The babies weren’t developed enough to absorb elixirs, they would be the same as poison to the babes.
Calia pulled away from her thoughts, opening her eyes to the light. Two beautiful green eyes stared back at her, full of fear but sparking with hope.
Calia tried to smile but she couldn’t keep the sorrow from her eyes. Her heart ached as she watched the woman’s eyes fall, the glowing light of hope fading.
Calia put a hand on the woman’s arm. She felt the trembling transferring to her through the touch. “I’m sorry, dear. Maybe try again at the end of the snowfall, the warmer months are better for unborn babes and mothers both.”
Seeing the woman was hardly listening, Calia stepped carefully out of the room. Through the closed door, Calia could hear the woman begin to cry.
Poor girl, sometimes the gods can be truly cruel.
…
Alice lay still in the bed, her chest heaving as she cried. Her arms curled around her stomach protectively. Her poor baby. “I-I’m sorry, my dear. Momma wasn’t good enough.”
She’d felt it for weeks now. The babe had stopped kicking, barely moving at all. She could feel the little life inside of her slipping away, and she could do nothing to stop it. The feeling of powerlessness crippled her. She had hoped beyond anything, prayed to the goddess every night. But still, her child was being taken from her. Her child would never smile, never cry, never want. It devastated her.
“Momma’s so so sorry.” She whispered it like a mantra, gently rubbing her bloated stomach as she cried.
…
She floated there, suspended in the abyss. No feeling, no sight, no sound, no smells. She tried to move her body, but it proved impossible. It felt as if she was nothing, but she was.
She cycled through her memories like going through a book. It was a fog, hazy and hardly manageable. Small snippets came to her, drifting along her consciousness before fading to the dark. Memories of running, surviving, freezing, starving, hurting.
Panic flooded her being as the memories crashed against her mind. The darkness around her was so suffocating, so crushing. She fell into memory, grasping with all she had at one in particular. It felt… foreign. Like it wasn’t her memory, but it was hers at the same time. As she focused, she was startled. This memory was different. All the others felt like a fleeting thing, paper on the wind, but this one felt firm. Like a bastion standing against the world, a safety she could fall within.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
She sat in a field. The blue sky was so bright, the suns warming her skin. The grass was green, soft and cooling against her bare skin. The breeze swept past her, swirling around her like an old friend. The scent of nature and wildflowers swept across her senses, easing her heart and making her breathe deeply.
She tried to move but the her of the memory refused to budge. She stayed, sitting cross legged in the grass. She knew her eyes were closed but she could still see everything around her. An intrinsic understanding of the space filled her mind with a picture. Like a detailed painting of the world encompassing her body.
The her of memory began to breathe, slowly, in through the nose and out the mouth. A rhythm like a dance began in her mind. The painting of the world began to change, colors blooming across the canvas like a million fireflies. Beautiful didn’t even begin to describe the scene.
It felt all-encompassing. An allure beyond herself. Like something she shouldn’t see, something sacred. The colors drifted across the canvas of her world, creating a beauty beyond reality. A soft music flowed within her ears, the tune unlike anything she could remember. The ethereal music of eternity filled her being, filled her soul.
The memory of herself drew upon the music, using it to guide the light. Gathering the light, the memory of her breathed deeply, drawing the light into her. The music and light filled her, nourishing her core, filling her with an ethereal warmth. A sense of right flooded her mind, a feeling of truth. Like everything before this moment, before this breath, had been a lie.
The memory of her smiled and spoke, the voice ethereal and gentle. “Hurry out, child. You don’t have much time.”
Like a catalyst, the words caused the memory to unravel, the beautiful world turning to mist before being swept along by the breeze.
She once more found herself floating in the dark. A terrible panic gripped her heart, flooding her being. A sense of emptiness filled her, swimming through her body, threatening to overwhelm her. But a small spark pushed back the dark ever so slightly. It only blinked, an ethereal thing outside of reality. Something truly unreal, but she could feel it. She knew it was there, knew it was something.
Her mind acted on instinct, like something she’d done a million times and yet something entirely unknown to her. She listened, straining her ears, her very existence. She knew not why, but something pushed her, something within her rang out, searching.
She didn’t know time, didn’t know feeling. She floated in the dark, searching for something, something she knew was there. And she found it, the faintest hint of a melody, a music drifting through the black. A sound like the tiniest violin flowed into her soul.
She didn’t know time, but her mind was slowing. It was becoming harder to think, harder to exist. She knew instinctively that she was running out of time. But she had found it. The music. She knew with her being that this was what she searched for, this is what would save her.
She strained herself, her very existence, toward the melody, toward the music, toward safety. She drew on it, pulling it into herself. A sense of right flowed into her, a sense she had never known but could no longer live without.
She listened to the melody as it filled her, using its soft voice to push away the encroaching dark. Something danced within the music, something bright, something true.
She spun the melody within, listening to the music as it guided her. Working together with the ethereal to pull the light into her, to combine it with herself. She could feel it deep within, a flame, instinctual and incorporeal, but real.
The music drew the light to the flame like a mother coaxing a child along. The soft violin as her guide, she combined the light with the flame, refining it, making it anew. The light turned liquid, flowing within her, filling her with energy she’d never felt before.
Her mind pushed back the encroaching darkness, the black that threatened her everything. Within the light she was safe, within the melody. But she could feel something, something important. It floated alongside her in the dark, connected to her, but separate. And it was outside the light, the music didn’t reach it. Which meant she had to.
On instinct, she drew upon the glowing light within herself, the power refined by the tiny flame, and pushed it outward. She pushed it along the connection she felt between herself and the thing in the dark. Not all of the energy made it across the bridge, much of it falling to the dark, but still she pressed on. Whenever she ran out of energy she would draw upon the music, guiding more light into the flame to refine it into energy. She then pushed that energy into the connection, flowing it into the thing in the dark.
The effort drained her, but she didn’t stop. In fact, she’d never felt better. Despite the fatigue, the feeling of the music and the light within her put her higher than she’d ever been. She’d continue in this pattern, listening, refining, and giving until she would pass out from exhaustion, then she’d continue. Endlessly.